Once upon a time, there was a diehard record collector who was out hunting at a thrift store in the Valley. He had been collecting for over 40 years and had been to thousands of garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales, mail-order and a few record stores (just to see if he was missing something). His collection had grown to over 30,000 lps and thousands more of everything else. A fellow thrift store record shopper told this diehard collector that he loved to go to a place called 'Grace Records' in the San Tan Mall. He loved to look through their three-dollar records and told him to check it out, so the collector did.
Indeed, there was such a store tucked away in the mall, and it did have three-dollar, one-dollar, used and new records. They also had many cool wall-displays, posters, t-shirts and other music-related items. Being a die-hard collector, I was naturally attracted to rare, unusual and inexpensive records, I spent a couple years checking for new, inexpensive additions (with some decent finds); however, I didn't get hooked until their manager, Brent told me that new arrivals were put out every Friday. They were shown on Instagram videos every Thursday at 8 p.m. Being a huge garage and psychedelic record fan, he told me that a huge collection of just such records was in the back room, waiting for a random week to be placed in the new arrivals bin.
Needless to say, I made it a point to watch Grace Records' Instagram video the next Thursday! At first, there were a couple items that had eluded my hunts over the last 40+ years, then more and more showed up! Wow! I was like a kid in a candy store! I had to buy some of these when the opportunity had finally arrived! Over the following weeks, I got to know Brent and some of my fellow record junkies better. Brent surprised me with his vast knowledge of the genre, his fair pricing practices, his integrity and sense of humor were all refreshing, and I knew that I had found a really special place that would keep me coming back and often "giddy" with excitement!
In the past, I had always found record stores to be overpriced, self-important/condescending or disappointing in their selection or too much of the "headshop" vibe to feel comfortable there. Grace seems to strike a good balance between hard core obscure record aficionados and curious teens checking out a vinyl store for the first time. Since I never pass up an opportunity to unearth another record gem, I'll never give up hunting elsewhere, but I will definitely invest much more time and money at Grace Records, confident that they will offer yet another dream-come-true! read more